Murder of Yangjie Li

About the victim

The murdered person, with surname Li, name Yangjie, was a 25-year-old Chinese architecture student at the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences (Dessau, Köthen, Bernburg). She studied at the School of Civil Engineering of the Henan University of Science and Technology in her hometown in East China province Henan.

Disappearance and discovery of body

On Wednesday, May 11, Li left her home in Johannisstraße in downtown Dessau-Roßlau to go jogging and did not return. She wore black pants, a white-gray shirt, black sneakers and following her usual running routes across the city, through Dessau's City Park and the museum district.

The next day, German police received a missing person report after her disappearance and mobilized hundreds of police officers in the city to search for the student. Meanwhile, many Chinese people posted messages online in Social Media such as WeChat channels about the missing student. Local Chinese also reported the missing student to the Chinese Embassy in Berlin for help.

On Friday, May 13, the police search focused on the Anhalt Theatre and the Friedensplatz area. Eventually, a naked female body was found dead in a bush in Hausmannstraße, near the Friedensplatz. The area was immediately cordoned off. The body carried severe wounds on the head and in the face, making an immediate identification impossible. Rudolf Lückmann, Professor at Anhalt University of Applied Sciences, later described, "Her mouth, along with the face, is brutally smashed off. Her disfigured body is covered with wounds from a hard struggle for survival."

Suspicion of joint murder and cover-up by police parents

On Saturday, May 14, police searched for eyewitnesses. On May 15, the first clue emerged that the killed woman was the victim of a crime, whereupon a murder case was begun. On May 16, the forensic medical examination confirmed that the body definitively belonged to the missing student, Li, as well as that there should be at least one trace of foreign DNA on the body. On May 19, the existence of foreign DNA traces was confirmed. Samples were passed on to the Federal Criminal Police Office for comparison but no match was found.

On Monday, May 23, a young local couple, Sebastian F. (20), the son and step-son of a senior official of the National Police and the Dessau police chief, and his fiancée Xenia I. (20), handed themselves in to police. The two claimed that the DNA found in the body of the victim could come from them, and that they had met Li the night before her disappearance for consensual sex, in an apartment building next to the location of the corpse, where they live in. The two claimed having not left the apartment after the meeting with Li, which is contradicted by eyewitnesses’ testimonies, after which Li had been seen elsewhere at the time when the purported meeting with the two took place. While the two denied any involvement in the murder, police made a successful DNA match, issued arrest warrant against the two on suspicion of joint murder.

Ramona S., the mother of the accused, and her partner Jörg S., both police officers, came under general suspicion of having covered up the evidences for the brutal murder in the couple's apartment. The mother, working for the police department Sachsen-Anhalt East, had protected her son previously during several criminal investigations of the local police, which was headed by her husband. She volunteered to join the investigating group "Anhalt". The stepfather has been the head of the Dessau police station since November 2012 until June 6, 2016, when he was barred from official duties (yet without disciplinary procedure). In particular they also helped the couple to empty the apartment on Saturday, May 21. The investigation was therefore transferred from the Dessau police to the police in Halle.

On Tuesday, May 24, following the arrest of the two suspects, at a press conference, Bittmann spread the version of the two suspects, that there had been a meeting with Li for consensual sex, an unevidenced assertion, contradicted by testimonies of witnesses from around Li. The spread of the suspect′s version outraged the parents of the murdered daughter, as well as Chinese students in Dessau and throughout Germany. This prejudice is thought to be a great damage to the reputation of the victim, her parents and her family in China, and also became a headline in the leading newspapers and social media in China, where the justice in the German legal system is cast into doubt.

The parents of the victim presented a disciplinary complaint against the Dessau-Roßlau chief prosecutor Folker Bittmann; however the Justice Department sees so far no reason to employ a different prosecutor other than Bittmann.

Parallels to the Oury Jalloh case

Chief prosecutor Folker Bittmann for the Li Yangjie case has also been responsible for the Oury Jalloh case for years, a refugee died in a mysterious fire in the police cell of the Dessau police station. During the course of the investigation in vain endeavor, evidences disappeared, police documents were destroyed and traces wiped off.

Reactions

On Wednesday, May 18, 600 Chinese students and many others gathered at the Seminarplatz to take part in a mourning rally. About 150 local people in Dessau, including many students, took part in a memorial night run from the city park in memory of the murdered Li.

Trial

The murder trial will take place from the end of November until February 2017